Virgin Galactic Announces First Commercial Flight in 2013

If you’re looking to fulfill your lifelong dream of being leaving the planet and being weightless for five minutes, and you just so happen to be absolutely filthy rich, you’re in luck. Businessman and eccentric rich guy Richard Branson is going to take you to space for the low, low price of just $200,000.

Your $2 hundred thousand will get you a two and a half hour flight in Virgin Galactic’s commercial space ship, the SpaceShipTwo. The flight includes five minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness and a great view of the endless vacuum of cold, dark space. The ship is set to fly as high as 68 miles above the earth’s surface (space begins at 62 miles) and as fast as 2,600 miles per hour.

Also you get to hang out with Ashton Kutcher and Branson himself, who are planning to be aboard the ship’s maiden flight. So there’s that I guess.

If you choose to sign up for the flight, you’ll be joining 529 others who have committed to being among the first to go where no obscenely wealthy person has gone before. You’ll also have to participate in a one-week training course prior to blast-off.

Two years after its original target date, the SpaceShipTwo is set to launch for real in late 2013. Sign up now and secure your place in the cosmos (and offload some of that pocket change that’s fallen between the seats of your Aston Martin).